Adam Putnam’s recent light installations
explore the psychoperceptual dimensions of space
with ingenuity and humor. “Sundial” (Eclipse) (2007) is
a case in point. The sculpture consists of two obeliskshaped
forms, one of wood and the other a mirror,
placed upright on the floor. Light from a hooded lamp
placed a few feet away bounces off the mirror onto a
wall, where its obelisk-shaped reflection falls directly
on the shadow cast by the wooden figure. In this dramatic
duel between light and dark neither side wins.
“Shadow and light cancel each other out,” observes the
artist, who says he was “trying to make a shape completely
disappear, an eclipsed image.”

Putnam acknowledges that the obelisk may remind
viewers of the Washington Monument in DC, but he is
less concerned with politics than with the ineffable
quality of space. This is evident in the Magic Lantern
installations he has been producing since 2004, named
after the protocinematic theatrical device that uses an
oil lamp and painted slides to project images. In Putnam’s
versions, a low-wattage bulb is suspended inside a
transparent boxlike container resting on a pedestal. The
light passing through the structure’s internal supports
and sides limns a ghostly illusionistic architectural
image on the walls. Pieces of opaque tape a≈xed to the
container’s surface cast shadows that appear as phantom
doors and other architectural details. By installing
mirrors inside, as he does for his Biennial piece, Green
Hallway (Magic Lantern) (2007), Putnam is able to
multiply the illuminations, creating illusionistic architectural
spaces on the surrounding walls. “These are
small, virtual rooms, and you project yourself into them
imagining yourself into the space,” he says.

Earlier in his career, Putnam enacted Bruce Naumanesque
performances in which he strapped himself into
a corner or contorted his large frame into a bookcase.
“There’s always been a weird, flat-footed play with the
body becoming architecture and following that to its
logical—either funny or perverse—conclusion,” he says.
He has made black-and-white self-portrait photographs
in which he appears shirtless with a sneaker taped to
his cheek, or on all fours wearing his pants on his head
and arms. According to the artist, these grainy, amateurish
pictures of absurd acts pay homage to the Conceptual
art of the 1970s.

Increasingly, Putnam is allowing space itself to be
the protagonist. For the video projection The Way Out
(2005), he shot a model of a three-walled room, then
removed the back wall and fit the diorama snugly
around a computer screen on which he displayed the
original video and reshot the setup, repeating the process
to create an endless recession of rooms. With
captivating artifice, Putnam’s multidisciplinary inquiry
into the imaging of space challenges the eye and teases
the mind. JASON EDWARD KAUFMAN